Written memos should be 2 single-spaced pages, 12-point font. Your memo should discuss topics or questions arising from the week’s reading. You might pull out specific passages to comment on or pull out what you see as a key concept, idea, or argument from the reading. These are thought pieces – they should be coherent, but they are not polished papers. You must end your memo by proposing at least one question for discussion.
- Individuals and modernityVan Vucht Tijssen, Lieteke. 1991. “Women and Objective Culture: Georg Simmel andMarianne Weber.” Theory, Culture & Society 8: 203-218.Weber, Marianne (with Introduction by Craig Bermingham). [1912] Authority andAutonomy in Marriage•Simmel, Georg. [1908]. The StrangerSimmel, Georg. [1903]. The Metropolis and Mental LifePatricia Madoo Lengermann, and Jill Niebrugge-Brantley. 2003. “Commentary on Craig R. Bermingham’s ‘Translation with Introduction and Commentary’ of Marianne Weber’s‘Authority and Autonomy in Marriage.’” Sociological Theory 21 (4): 424–427.
from the SAGE Social Science Collections. All Rights Reserved.
Authority and Autonomy in Marriage
MARIANNE WEBER
Translation with Introduction and Commentary
CRAIG R. BERMINGHAM
INTRODUCTION
In “Authority and Autonomy in Marriage,”1 Marianne Weber investigated marriage
and the relations between the sexes by first addressing the ideas that have determined
the character of those relations through history. In so doing, she studied and evaluated two competing normative systems: “authority” and “autonomy.” Weber examined the dominant normative system, “authority” (of the man over the woman), its
origins, and its consequences for marriage and the spouses, and advocated its replacement by the “form principle” of “autonomy.” The latter constitutes an ethical standard that arose out of the ideas of Puritanism and the Enlightenment, was thrust upon
the modern woman through industrialization, and, if accepted over authority as a
legally mandated standard governing marital relations, would lead to greater fulfillment on the part of the womanÐand the manÐin marriage.
In order to place Weber’s argument in “Authority” in its proper context, three
points are worth mentioning. First, as a matter of politics, Weber lobbied for an
overhaul of the German legal provisions regarding male authority in the family as a
first step in her broader agenda that sought to liberate women from their historically
subordinate position. Second, she not only argued for an emancipatory restructuring
of the marital institution, but, at the same time, defended the marital ideal, the
“highest and most unquestionable ethical ideal that life has to offer” (Weber
1907:571), against a contemporary eroticist movement, which she condemned as
invidious to the interests of women and to all that is spiritually fulfilling about the
relationship between man and woman (Weber 1950:409±26). Third, Weber’s emphasis
on marriage, and on achieving women’s autonomy in marriage by way of legal
reform, rests on the fundamental assumption that human beings shape one another
in interactions, and that the sexual relation, in particular, defines human beings more
fundamentally than any other. As she has written elsewhere, “[N]o human relation is
so full of consequences as the sexual relation. Nothing shapes human beings more
decisively than their relation in this sphere” (Weber 1950:410).
1
In my introduction and commentary, I will refer to Weber’s essay either by its full name, “Authority and
Autonomy in Marriage,” or by the abbreviation, “Authority.” Though “Authority” is my principle focus,
when necessary, I will draw on the author’s other works as well.
Sociological Theory 21:2 June 2003
American Sociological Association. 1307 New York Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20005-4701
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The following translation of “Authority” and the subsequent commentary are
meant to contribute to a study of Marianne Weber’s work that is urgently needed
for several reasons. First, like many of her contemporaries, Weber was a pioneering
sociologist who studied the consequences of modernity. However, as a feminist, she
was particularly interested in examining and critiquing women’s subjugation amidst
the wrenching social transformations of the time. Second, Weber published nine
books of social analysis during her life, including Wife and Mother in the Development
of Law (1907), which established her as the “acknowledged authority on women’s
position in society, as well as an authority on family law and its development”
(Britton 1979:31), and Women’s Questions and Women’s Thoughts (1919), in
which “Authority” was first published. Additionally, her biography of Max Weber,
and the 10 volumes of his work edited and proofed by her within the first two years
after his death, not only preserved Max’s thought for posterity but offer considerable
insight into her own life and scholarship as well. Third, during her life, Weber was a
well-known public figure in Germany who was the first woman elected to a German
parliament, was a member of the Bavarian Assembly, was elected as the only female
representative to the Baden State Constitutional Convention of 1919, and was an
executive committee member of a political party that became part of the governing
coalition in the early Weimar Republic. Finally, Weber interacted with several of
sociology’s “canonized” male founders, such as Georg Simmel, Robert Michels, and
her husband Max. She directed a feminist critique at their work and thought while
they were still alive, and in the process of formulating the very ideas for which they are
remembered today. For all of these reasons Weber’s thought deserves scholarly
attention.
AUTHORITY AND AUTONOMY IN MARRIAGE (1912)2
Whoever wants to fundamentally understand and correctly judge the inner structure of
marriage and the relation between the sexes must at least cast a short glance at the
history of its development, above all at the leading ideas through which it has been
defined. As far as can be determined, at the beginning of all history the woman was the
property of the man among all of the civilized peoples of Europe. Through purchase or
exchange, he gained unlimited right of ownership over her and her children. For this
reason, he could freely dispose of her person, e.g., at any time sell her, expel her, or take
up with her competitors, while she remained, with respect to him, completely without
rights, permanently bound, and obligated to loyalty and obedience.
As such, initially, the only formal shaping principle regarding the relation between
man and woman is simply the right of the stronger: primitive patriarchalism. It still
exists today among diverse uncivilized peoples as an unquestioned legal form.
The community between man and woman can only then be characterized as
marriage in an actual sense when the absolute power of the man finds its limits
through certain obligations toward the woman. Universally, this occurs first when
the woman’s family ceases to turn her over unconditionally to the power of the man,
above all not without equipping her with a dowry, which elevates the woman as “wife”
to a position above concubines. Her family thus earns for her an entitlement according to which her children must be considered the man’s “legitimate heirs” over all of
2
With regard to the footnotes appearing in the translation of Weber’s essay, the original author’s footnotes
appear in roman text. My explanatory footnotes appear in italics. Additionally, all italics and quotation marks
within the text itself appeared in Weber’s original essay.
AUTHORITY AND AUTONOMY IN MARRIAGE
87
his other children. In this way, the oldest, conscious structuring of sexual relations
was created everywhere out of the natural relation of power: the so-called legitimate
marriage as an insurance of certain women and their children against the polygamous
drives of the husband. Otherwise, initially, marriage completely maintained the character of a relation of ownership.3
From that time onward, every great cultural age has formed and built on this
original structure, and everywhere, namely, in the same fundamental direction. Wherever civilization grew, the aspiration grew as well to somehow protect the woman
from the barbaric arbitrariness of the husband. On the other hand, everywhere, his
domination over her and the children nevertheless remained secure. The husband was
directed toward humane patriarchy, toward a milder domination of the wife, but not
toward the recognition of her as a companion.
The creation of monogamous marriage as an institute of law was the work of the
Greeks and Romans. This means that they created legal monogamous marriage,
which did, of course, forbid the husband from taking several wives into the home,
and only allowed him to gain legitimate children from one wife. However, it hindered
him neither legally nor morally from possessing as many other women as he liked
outside the home without any obligation. Also at that time, the commandment of
marital fidelity was imposed, under threat of severe punishment, only on the woman.
She alone was the one who had to answer for the realization of a social and ethical
ideal which Antiquity already revered and recognized, but yet without making the
attempt to force the sexually “needier” nature of the man under its sway.
In contrast to the Greeks and Romans, old Judaism still permitted polygamy. Only
it surrounded marriage for the first time with a religious consecration of nothing less
than world-historical significance. Marriage was revealed to the prophets of the
covenant as God’s oldest institution and order. God Himself had, accordingly, blessed
the first couple. But God Himself had also determined the relations of the partners.
He created for the husband a “helper,” and imposed on her the Word: “Your will shall
be subordinate to your husband and he shall be your master.”4 Thus, not only was
marriage thereby made holy, but marriage in a special form.
This sanctioning of patriarchalism had the furthest-reaching consequences. It has
determined the structure of Christian marriage up until our times. For the lofty
Christian teachings of religious equality of the woman were already distorted by the
greatest apostle when it came to her relation to her spouse. The bearer of Christian
propaganda, Paul, who sought, in all other areas of life, to break out of Jewish
tradition, remained entirely within its limits regarding the woman. Referring to the
authority of “the law,” he sealed not only the woman’s obligation of obedience, but
also her total position with respect to the man, as a being of second order: “[F]or the
man is not from the woman, but the woman from the man. And the man is not
created for the good of the woman, but rather the woman is created for the good of
the man.”5 This position has been reified into dogma up until the present in all of
those circles that believe in “definitive revelations,” but has asserted its power beyond
these circles as well. But in another direction, Christianity created a large, new cultural
product: the deepening of the demand of “legalized” monogamy into an indispensable
religious-cultural imperative, that now was not only directed toward the woman, but
rather, for the first time in history, emphatically toward the man as well.
3
For the historical basis for this account, compare Marianne Weber, “Wife and Mother in the
Development of Law,” TuÈbingen, 1907.
4
See Genesis 2:18±25 and Ephesians 5:22±24.
5
See 1 Corinthians 11:8±9.
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SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY
Though the fulfillment of this ideal has yet only been realized by a small part of
humanity, the mere fact that this was set as a goal to be strived for had to influence
the relation between man and woman most definitively. Only then, when the man was
also directed toward unification with one woman, could marriage become the vessel
for all of his spiritual strength. Only then was the soil made fertile, in which, out of the
natural element of fleeting sexual love, the most tender and deepest spiritual relation
between man and woman could grow, a relation of which it would not be senseless to
demand that it be everlasting.
However, the completeness of the Christian marital ideal would soon suffer losses
through the teachings of the Church. As a reaction against the sexual excesses of the
cultural world of late antiquity, these teachings exaggerated the ideal of controlling
one’s sex life to the point of despising all that is natural, and called for its furthest
suppression possible. The natural foundation of the community between man and
woman was, from then on, banished to the domain of sin. It was still permissible in
marriage, but even there, it was not worthy of any holy consecration. Life without
marriage was considered the more complete state of affairs. Eve, the type of earthly
woman oriented toward the flesh, the mother of sin, the temptress to evil, was
juxtaposed to the Virgin Mary as the embodiment of undefiled motherliness.
Protestantism did raise marriage, as a work of God, above celibacy, as the work of
humans; but it also allowed sexual love only under the blemish of “evil desire,” which
originates not from God, but from the devil. In the case of such desire God merely
“looks through the fingers” in marriage because, as Luther says, there it is compensated by many kinds of listlessness and torment.6
New arguments in the Bible were sought for the subordination of the woman.
Thus, Luther cites Eve’s Fall from Grace very emphatically as its historical source: “If
Eve hadn’t sinned, she would have reigned together with Adam and ruled as his
helper.”7 But now the Regime belongs to him alone, and she must bow before him as
before her master.
But, on the other hand, the spirit of Protestantism also contributed to the deepening
of the marital ideal, and the shaping of everyday marital life. Namely, through those
currents outside of the official churches of the Reformation that are classified as Puritan.
Of course, Puritanism made a detour that is not easily recognizable. It, namely, carried
into the world and into the institution of marriage with inexorable strictness the ascetic
ideals of monasticism: rejection of all life pleasures and suppression of sensuality.
Luther’s God had still, just like the Catholic God, in magnanimous generosity turned
a blind eye toward marital sensuality. The God of the Puritans allowed marital sensuality
only for the purpose of the procreation of children for the greater glory of God.
However much we like, today, to sharply reject this demonization and rationalization of elementary vitality, one should not forget that precisely that Puritan breeding,
which for long periods of time attained a never-before-achieved disciplining of the
man, should be credited with a deepening of the spiritual and ethical relation between
man and woman that since then has never been lost. Only then, when subjugation of
the elementary was taken seriously, could the focus become the spiritual8 melting
together of the partners, the intimacy of their spiritual relationship as the most
important meaning of marriage.
6
For further reading of passages in Martin Luther’s writing that reflect this sentiment, see Luther’s Works
(1961 1: 116; 3:47±48; 25:320±321; 45:35±36; 51:154.)
7
For this passage in Martin Luther’s writing, see Luther’s Works (1961 1:203.)
8
“seelische”: This German word comes from die Seele (the soul). Here, Marianne is referring to the “melting
together of the partners’ souls.”
AUTHORITY AND AUTONOMY IN MARRIAGE
89
That which marriage was capable of becoming in these circles was expressed in the
religious-colored language of the time, most beautifully in a farewell letter written by
the Quaker W. Penn to his wife as he departed his homeland in order to found a new
state on the other side of the ocean: “Don’t forget that you were the love of my youth
and the chief joy of my life, the most beloved and worthiest of my earthly solace. The
reason for that love existed more in your inner than in your outer virtues, though the
latter are many. God knows it, you know it, and I too can say it, that our connection
was a work of Providence, and God’s likeness in each of us was that which attracted
us to one another the most.” What kind of a world lies between this understanding of
the relation between the sexes and that which reveals itself in a Greek thinker’s wellknown remark: “We have hetaera to amuse ourselves with, after that purchased
hussies to care for our bodies, and finally wives who should give us legal children,
and whose duty it is to watch over all of the matters of our house.”9
Within the religious communities of the new world that were governed by the
Puritan spirit, the thought of religious equality of the woman was taken seriously for
the first time. For the Quakers, the teachings in the Bible did not represent the
definitive and only possible revelation, but rather one of many forms in which the
“inner light” appears to human beings. They could, for that reason, drop the dogma
concerning the subordination of the woman as God’s desire. “Obey God more than
human beings”; this sentence, which establishes freedom of conscience on the part of
the individual as an inalienable right against every earthly authority, was recognized
among these communities for the first time also in the case of the wife with respect to
the husband. Freedom of conscience, the mother of all civil rights of the individual,
stood across the ocean at the cradle of women’s rights as well.
Fundamental subjugation under traditional and trusted authoritiesÐfundamental
subjugation only under one’s own conscienceÐfrom then on, those are the two forms
of human action that arise equally out of religious feeling, and between which there is
only an “either-or.”
The eighteenth century directed at worldly things the idea that every human
beingÐprecisely because he is a human beingÐis entitled to certain inalienable rights
vis-aÁ-vis all others and every earthly authority:10 against the state in the form of a
demand for political participation and legal equality of its citizens, against the social
community in the form of a moral demand on the part of the individual for a certain
sphere of inner and outer freedom. These ideas achieved their deepest significance and
their highest clarity in the ethical teachings of freedom of German idealism, through
our great thinkers Kant and Fichte.
That which in this context is of interest may be formulated in a few sentences: The
human being is, as a bearer of reason, intended to govern himselfÐthat is, to act not,
for example, according to the arbitrariness of his instincts, but rather, in accordance
with a conscience that has been subordinated to the moral law. As a bearer of this
capacity for “autonomy,” the individual possesses its specific dignity, which distinguishes it as a “personality” before all other beings; it may, for that reason, raise the
claim to be “an end in itself.” Out of these ideas arises the simple and undeniable
principle for the shaping of human relationships: every person should respect in every
9
Hetaera refers to a highly cultured courtesan or concubine, especially in ancient Greece.
In this translation, I have chosen to employ the masculine pronoun form because Marianne used that form
in the original German. Marianne’s use of the German masculine pronoun er was not a consciously gendered
choice, but rather a matter of grammatical necessity. In German, the pronoun employed must be masculine
because, grammatically, it must agree with the gender of the word for human being, der Mensch, which is also
masculine.
10
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SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY
other human being the predestination of that person to be an end in himself. No
person should consider his fellow human beings merely as a means for his personal
ends. There is, in reality, hardly a human relationship thinkable that, if it desires to be
ethically adequate, can get around this maxim. And the path from the acceptance of
this sentence to a new structuring of the relation between the sexes seems to be a short
one. For according to it, the highest ethical goal of existence, for the woman as well,
can be nothing other than the development into a morally autonomous personality.
Accordingly, it is just as immoral for her, too, to bend to a foreign will against her own
conscience. Accordingly, she, too, may not be used as a mere means to the husband’s ends.
But again, alone in the case of the woman, these ideals were distorted. The
tradition that conceded to the man’s natural instincts for power remained powerful
with regard to her. Even the great heralds of autonomy did not even think about
laying a hand on the patriarchal system. Instead, they tried, through a clever chess
move of reason, to bring her fundamental subordination into agreement with the new
ideals. Husband and wife are declared to be “originally equals,” and marriage a
contract through which the wife voluntarily subordinates herself to the husband. In
Kant’s view, it is not, for example, contrary to the equality of the spouses, if the law
says of the husband with reference to the wife: And he should be your master. And
Fichte’s dialectic was even able to infer, out of his teachings on freedom, a patriarchal
marital ideal, which did, of course, include a complete right to divorce on the part of
the woman.
But that which was denied the woman in the realm of the idea was soon forced
upon her in the realm of realities. The new life forces of the Machine Age blew open
the circle of her family duties, led her away from the protection of the house, and
thereby out of the husband’s sphere of domination. The increasing reduction of
household work under the pressure of technical and economic forces compels a
constantly increasing percentage of women to either temporarily or permanently
stand on their own feet outside the home.
But the intellectual ring that had closed around her due to the restriction of her
activities and influence to the house was also thereby blown open. Today, she sees
herself woven into a world of superpersonal contexts that demand that she prove herself
in new ways. She sees herself placed before an array of new forms of influence and life
problems, between which no one other than she can rationally choose. This intellectual
departure from the house, just like the economic departure, must fundamentally shift
her position within our social community and her relation to the other sex.
We are, indeed, experiencing also in our time, like in no time before, a thorough
readjustment of the customs and views regarding the woman, and an expansion of the
opportunities for life and development that are conceded to her. In many areas of life,
she has achieved the legal status to speak for herself; in other areas, she is still denied
that status. And above all, for marriage, in which man and woman are most closely
and directly connected to one another, the legally protected predominance of the
husband is still an indispensable form-principle. We find, of course, a growing number
of men, above all from the leading intellectual strata, who are ready to value their own
wife as a personality and to do without the use of gender privilege with regard to her.
However, only very few today agree to the fundamental renunciation of the rights of
authority with regard to the entire female sex.
An unmistakable document of this fact is the legal form of modern marriage, which
the German representatives of the people bestowed upon us just in time for the turn of
the century. It is true that the German Civil Code fundamentally recognizes women’s
juridical competency, and makes them, just like men, fully responsible in business and
AUTHORITY AND AUTONOMY IN MARRIAGE
91
transactions. But the housewife’s competency is limited wherever it could threaten the
husband’s dominance in the household. Thus, our marital law is a strangely garnished
construct, which bears all the stylelessness of a compromise between irreconcilable
principles.
For example, the robust, ungarnished obedience-article that is familiar to all older
statutory regimes is disguised in a politely appearing husband’s decision-making
authority, which nevertheless inadequately hides its unaltered fundamental character.
For the decision-making authority is valid not only in the husband’s special sphere of
duties, but rather in all those matters that concern the family’s collective life, i.e., also
in the housewife and mother’s special sphere of duties. Furthermore, marital law
today indeed provides for “parental authority” rather than the paternal authority of
earlier times, but the mother’s parental authority attains its full scope of application
only after the father’s death, or when he is hindered from exercising that authority.
Next to the father, the mother’s parental authority is only a fragment. She can neither
represent the children in court and in legal transactions, nor manage and administer
their property. Minor children need only the father’s consent to enter into marriage.
And above all, the wife is again expressly subordinate to the husband within the most
important sphere of parental duty: the welfare of the children’s person, which is vested
in the mother as well as the father, and their care and rearing, which includes a
determination of their living arrangements. In the case of differences of opinion, the
father decides. That is, he can determine for the boys and girls which school they
attend, which vocation they take up, and where they should be reared.
In addition to this personal subordination, this legislative regime also provides for
the wife’s pecuniary dependence. This has perhaps less fundamental significance, but
in everyday marital life, it is of all the more practical importance. Of course, the new
economic conditions of life, into which our age has placed the woman, have also
wrested an important innovation from German legal thinking: the wife’s independent
earnings from work remain at her disposal as her savings, while in earlier times she
had to hand them over to her husband.
The working woman has thus become, up to a certain point, economically independent. This is not the case, however, for the woman with her own property assets
insofar as she does not protect herself before marriage through a special marital
contract. For the legal regime places all of the assets that she brings into the marriage
in the hands of her husband. This is done explicitly in order to secure, as the
comments to the German civil code acknowledge, the husband’s position as “master
of the household and head of the marriage.” And, above all, there is a mass of women
who are not secure, including those who are without property, and who have to do
without independent earnings for the good of their career as housewives and mothers.
Still today, these women, even if one only views it economically, make irreplaceable
contributions to the family through their domestic work, and perhaps also through
their assistance in their husbands’ careers. To be sure, all of these women have a legal
claim to support by their husbands that is appropriate to their social standing. But this
very elastic formulation provides them with not a penny for their free disposal, and
secures for them not even a modest independence for the satisfaction of their personal
needs. For both the woman with property and the woman without, it is at the pleasure
and discretion of the husband whether she will be able to freely dispose of some
amount of money.
The modern women who strive for personality rights in the deepest sense for their
sex, responsibility and self-reliance, protest against these carryovers from the
patriarchal system. Precisely because the woman, by force of her familial functions
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through marriage, is normally much more strongly bound than the husband in every
sense, physically and economically, the lawmaker should, first and foremost, make her
protection a priority. For that reason, they juxtapose the principle of the authority of
the husband with the idea of companionship of the partners as a form principle in
marriage, and propose:
1. Elimination of the husband’s general, legal decision-making authority.
2. A different distribution of parental rights, such that in the event of unsolvable
differences of opinion, the husband decides for the sons, and the wife decides
for the daughters.
3. They work to achieve, for the women of all strata, a sphere of pecuniary
independence secured through a more exact definition of the support obligations of the husband.
Here is not the place to further expound upon these legal questions. As such, we
return to the fundamental ethical question: whether authority or autonomy should
shape spouses’ relations.
How, then, does marriage look when, in accordance with its legal form, the
fundamental authority of the husband really governs the relationships of the partners?
Then there is no doubt that the family and the house are the husband’s sphere of
domination. Then in the sphere of influence that has been ascribed to the woman from
time immemorial as her native, innate domain, she stands as housewife and mother
constantly under the tutelage of the husband. And in all matters in which she should
normally be considered the more competent, she has, at most, an advisory, but not a
deciding, voice. For that reason, in the case of differences of opinion between the
partners, an external unity of will is effortlessly createdÐand the authoritarian
principle is still justified today by this highly external aim. But is it worth the sacrifices
that it costs? It is clear that the constant bending of the wife’s will without her inner
consent and conviction can either be a mere feigned submission on her part, from
which she, in turn, underhandedly frees herself behind her husband’s back, or it
actually achieves a suppression of her ability to reasonÐthat is, the atrophy of her
entire intellectual and spiritual development. Whoever has once learned the satisfaction of acting conscientiously according to one’s own determination will know how
the inner development of those women is restricted whose wants and aspirations are
never given free reign under the pressure of authority.
The influence of the patriarchal system can certainly not stop at matters that affect
only the life of the family community, as its modern proponents purport. There is no
question that it also extends itself all of the way into the sphere of the woman’s
entirely personal life. For marital relationships encompass the entire person, and that
which one spouse does and feels, touches necessarily at some point the life of the
other. The male spouse who is patriarchally disposed will without question also want
to dictate and control the inner life of the woman. The richer and more independent
the content of her personality comes to be, the more difficult her fundamental
subordination must of course become.
For this reason, strong aspirations toward self-reliance and intellectual development necessarily fill a husband who is bent on authority with a severe uneasiness. He
will not rest if he is not constantly secure also in his position as the master of her most
personal inner life. He will feel the need to monitor her readings, her friendships, her
interests outside the home. This half-unconscious tendency, which is, in many cases,
merely suggested by tradition, also continues to make countless husbands today
AUTHORITY AND AUTONOMY IN MARRIAGE
93
suspicious of every serious ambition on the part of women to be active beyond the
limits of the house. And that is entirely understandable. For outside the home they
are, just like men, placed in superpersonal contexts and structures that remove them
from personal domination.
The inner protest of the patriarchally disposed husband, who lacks the full, naive
freedom from restraint of earlier times, is normally dressed up as a concern that the
woman is neglecting her family life and her childrenÐa plea that rarely fails to
achieve its effect on conscientious, sensitive women. From time immemorial up until
the present day, a part of the energy and intellectual vitality of the womanÐeven of
her moral qualities: forthrightness and courage in her own opinionÐhave very
certainly been sacrificed to her rearing for patriarchal marriage, and to that marriage
itself. Has it not been made through all the centuries into a religious obligation, and a
precondition for her happiness, that she learn submission in silent obedience? And
certainly the feelings of happiness of many women have been less impaired through
this process than their inner development. This can only change when husbands learn
to do without the fundamental privileges of authority.
But does the ethical autonomy of the woman forbid any subordination of her will
whatsoever to that of the husband? Very certainly not. Voluntary subordination,
devotion, which is offered as a free gift of love, is something different than compelled
subordination. The personality that is responsible for its own actions does not then
end up in a contradiction with itself if it bends before another personality’s higher
insight, more mature judgment, and greater completeness due to its own inner convictions, if it sacrifices for the higher aspirations of a greater person. On the basis of
such convictions, the autonomous woman can of course also make her husband’s will
her own, and place her wishes and interests behind his. But when that can occur may
only be decided before the forum of her own conscience, and only from case to case. It
may absolutely not be decided for all time at the very beginning of their relationship,
as the principle of authority would require. In any case, where the wife knows that the
husband is caught in a mistakeÐand the husband also “errs, as long as he continues
to try”Ðand where, for that reason, she cannot freely agree with him, then in the
spirit of autonomy, her own inner voice must decide. Then she must, to express it
religiously, claim the right: to obey God more than human beings. Only the free
sacrifices of love for the aspirations of a greater person possess beauty and dignity. A
husband’s offer of these to the wife is also no disgrace.
But if, instead of such free giving of one’s self, the woman obliges his needs and
everyday goals against her inner voice, simply because it is comfortable, for the sake
of outward peace, or to please her husband, then she commits blasphemy against her
own human dignity; then she devalues herself to a second-class being.
And the consequences of such a relation between the partners turn back on the
husband as well. The wife who is subordinated remains “subordinated” in the totality
of her being: almost a child, naive to the world, intellectually contented, enclosed in
the circle of the household, fixed in her interests on the purely personal and trifling.
And this is the tragic irony of her fate: this woman who, in order to comply with her
husband’s wishes, did not fully develop her powers of moral judgment and her
intellectual abilities is normally left mentally and spiritually far behind in the course of
the years by the aspiring, alert husband. She cares for him in their everyday life, but she
has absolutely no problems, no complementing ideas or impulses, no intellectual stimulations to offer him. The relationship to her requires absolutely no effort from his side.
Thus, we often experience then that the much-extolled German model-housewife
always remains valuable to the husband as the mother of his children and the source
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of his comfort, but that he would rarely think of sharing his higher intellectual life
with her. He even often prefers to seek the normal rest and relaxation alone, for
everyday life’s thick dust of boredom covers the relationships and turns to gray that
which was once colorful and shining. And then when, with increasing desire for
comfort, real chivalry fades out of everyday marital life, a state of affairs often
developsÐeven in those strata where, according to their position in life and talents,
it would definitely not be necessaryÐabout which Nietzsche spoke: “Ah, this poverty
of a soul in twos, ah, this filth of a soul in twos, ah, this pitiful comfort in twos! They
call all of this marriage, and they say their marriages were made in heaven.”11
Or the other possibility: Time and destiny mature the woman in spite of her
authoritarian boundedness. Then one day her aspirations and reason will break
through their bounds. But then it is very difficult, with respect to a husband who
had been used to her subordination up to that point, to find courage in her own
opinion, and to thereby upset the marital equilibrium. How often have even noble and
brave women been able to find no other way out of the conflict between the dictates of
one’s own conscience and the dictates of one’s husband than to pretend to submit
themselves to him, but to secretly circumvent such submission. The individual life of
the woman that for so long remained latent confronts the husband as a strange,
hostile element that disturbs the marital happiness. The unconditional trust vanishes,
the marital life then splits in an often-irreparable breach, and all of this just because
the wife first found herself so late, and because the husband did not learn to value the
being at his side as “destined for self-determination” just as he is.
Modern women value marriage as it should beÐthat is, a life’s partnership that is
founded on the affinity of souls and senses, and on the desire for full responsibility, as
the highest ideal of human community that stands as an unshakable guiding star
above the sexual life of civilized humanity. They are, like the women of all times,
prepared to make those sacrifices that, as family members, marriage now demands
of them as a matter of necessity. These sacrifices are perhaps more difficult to make
for many today than in earlier times because our time is the first to know the conflict
between marriage and career, and between the special family tasks of the woman and
her inner drive to contribute to the construction of the superpersonal cultural world.
Modern women alone would now like to be declared of age, and to be respected by
the husband as a companion for life who, like him, stands before the face of eternity
responsible for her actions, and who, like him, must autonomously prove herself in
the world. They demand the trust that the female sex can learn to keep the balance
between natural and self-selected tasks just as well as the male sex between its various
obligations and interests. And they are convinced that only where this occurs can
marriage be more than an institution of social expediency.
It is no small task to keep the marital partnership free from the suffocating ash of
everyday life and habit through all of the phases of a long life, from the time of
youthful passion that allows no room for anything else, through the prime of life,
where, along with love, an abundance of other powers struggle to rule the soul, up
until the time when days grow few. More dangerous than all the suffering and strife
that destiny imposes from without, more fearful than the problems that arise out of
the struggle of souls, is the endless chain of satisfied, comfortable, struggleless everydays, in which the partners have one another effortlessly in possession. Only when, in
11
For the context of this quote in the original German, see Nietzsche’s “Also sprach Zarathustra; Ein Buch
fuÈr Alle und Keinen” in Nietzsche’s Werke in Drei BaÈnden (1994:156±57). For this quote in a readable English
translation, see Nietzche (1966:70).
AUTHORITY AND AUTONOMY IN MARRIAGE
95
both husband and wife, the content of their souls, the riches of their inner beings,
remain in constant growth, can the holy flame of tender and deep sensitivity continuously find new nourishment. Only then can the hours return again and again, in
which, between all earthly things, the treasure of love illuminates as a certainty of the
everlasting in the human soul. But a part of this, above all, is that the wife, too,
remains one who is reaching and becoming, so that she can forever give to her
husband from her own self-earned, inner treasures.
TRANSLATOR’S COMMENTARY
Weber’s Objective and Methodology
Marianne Weber’s chief objectives, and a number of important aspects of her methodology, are revealed through the opening sentence of her essay. In “Authority,”
Weber attempted to “fundamentally understand” marriage through an essentially
historical, conceptual approach. Like her neo-Kantian teacher, Heinrich Rickert,
Weber believed that unique historical events may only be understood, and made
relevant to our understanding of the present, by clearly formulating historical concepts that illuminate distinctions between unique historical phenomena (see Rickert
1902). In this regard, for example, Weber began her study by proposing several “ideal
typical” constructs, or, to use Rickert’s language, “historical individuals”: “primitive
patriarchalism,” “legitimate marriage,” and “humane patriarchy.” Arguably, she also
employed “autonomy of the partners” as an “ideal type” to understand the present
reality of marriage. Ultimately, however, Weber advocated her concept of autonomy,
and used it to critique male authority. As such, in contrast to Rickert, her historical
constructs represent more than merely “ideas” built to aid logical analysis and an
interpretive understanding of the social world. For her, they are also “ideals” in the
normative, prescriptive sense of the word.
Her second aimÐto “correctly judge” marriage and sexual relationsÐshould be
understood in this context. Weber made clear value judgments regarding patriarchal
domination through history. Not only is this true in the context of this essay, but it is
also characteristic of her methodology in general. For, as she informs us elsewhere:
[T]he social science academic, whose findings are, in great measure, usable for
the shaping of life, and who, for that reason, is responsible for the course of
politics, has a double task: the advancement of truth for its own sake, and the
orientation of his actions on clear, consciously chosen convictions. (Weber
1950:361)
Apart from the importance of normatively prescriptive historical concepts in her
analysis, Weber’s call for an examination “above all” of the “leading ideas” that have
“defined” marriage (the first half of “Authority” is devoted to this subject), emphasizing
the role of ideas in history. These ideasÐor “form principles,” as she called themÐ
amount to sanctioned standards of conduct that defined marriage by constraining
individual action. Thus, while Weber maintained that sexual relations shape human
beings more than any other, this level of social life is dependent upon a more structural
inquiry into the institutionally sanctioned norms that define marriage in the first place.
Additionally, while Weber understood the defining historical role of ideas, she also
observed that, through history, a larger structure of oppressionÐpatriarchyÐhad
permeated the institutions in which ideas are formed and enforced, and manipulated
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them as an instrument of domination. Weber’s consideration of the law, religion, and
the Enlightenment should be seen in this context. Yet the author also recognized that
the patriarchal system does not merely produce an ideology that perpetuates oppression. In contrast, Weber asserted that many potentially liberating ideas arose out of
institutions, seemingly independent of patriarchal domination, but that those ideas
were also distorted by men in power within institutions who were not willing to
consistently apply them to women as well. For instance, Christianity and the Enlightenment produced liberating ideas that could have had immense impact on women’s
social status. However, St. Paul and the great Enlightenment thinkers, respectively,
“reconstructed” those ideas to reconcile them with the precepts of patriarchy.
Areas of Substantive Focus in “Authority and Autonomy in Marriage”
Weber’s examination of the Protestant ethic. In a discussion that reveals fascinating
parallels to her husband’s work, Weber examined the moral standards of conduct
advanced by Christianity, particularly the “spirit of Protestantism,” their profound
influence on the behavior of married partners, and their consequent influence on the
character of marriage as an institution.
As an important early step in this process, the author considered the efforts of
medieval Catholicism to harness the powerful energy of religion as a shaping force in
the sexual lives of men and women. Catholicism began the enforcement of monogamy
as a moral ideal that, for the first time, applied to both men and women, and placed
great emphasis on the suppression of individuals’ sex lives. Luther’s ReformationÐ
and especially the ideas of PuritanismÐcontinued this process by releasing the powerful religious forces of the monasteries into everyday life, and thereby transformed
actors’ sexual activities into religiously meaningful and highly “disciplined” tasks.
This morally mandated, strict control of sexual drives fundamentally transformed
marriage by removing sex as its basis and founding it instead upon spiritual, ethical
values: mutual responsibility and dedication; honesty and respect between partners,
rather than the pursuit of selfish goals at the expense of the other; orientation on the
future of the relationship through emotional and intellectual investment; and unwavering fidelity. Additionally, Weber noted that these same standards continue to
define the character of marriage, though Puritanism no longer provides the religious
meaning and sanction for them.
Apart from the establishment of a deeper spiritual and romantic bond between the
partners, Weber also attributed to the “Puritan spirit” the development of “freedom of
conscience” as a moral standard that mandated action according to one’s conscience,
rather than on the basis of blind and thoughtless obedience to earthly authorities. This
moral standard not only stood at the fore of women’s rights in general, but, in
particular, changed the character of marriage by explicitly freeing the woman, for
the first time in history, from the husband’s authority.
In her discussion of Protestantism, Weber revealed several additional themes that
are worth noting at this juncture: First, in discussing the influence of Puritan moral
standards on the character of marriage, her observations suggest a clear dialectical
tension in her thought. For example, though Western religion has promoted values
that have relegated women throughout history to second-class status, it has also given
rise to the ideals of liberation that would free women from that status. While religion
sanctioned the subordinate role of the woman, it also enforced monogamy in the case
of the man as well. Though the “spirit of Protestantism” promoted the abhorrence of
all natural sexual pleasure in marriage, the disciplining of the man and the elevated
AUTHORITY AND AUTONOMY IN MARRIAGE
97
importance of marriage facilitated a romantic, spiritual, and intellectual union
between the partners such as had never before been seen, and which has never since
been lost. In short, though her feminist critique of Christianity is powerful and
effective, Weber’s discussion also suggests that she by no means rejected that tradition
in its entirety. On the contrary, the oppressive and emancipatory ideas arising out of
that tradition exist in dialectical tension to one another.
Second, Weber introduced several themes that are of critical importance in order to
make her argument polemically appealing to the reader, and as a matter of theoretical
analysis. On the one hand, she emphasizedÐoften in poetic and romantic proseÐthe
importance for human beings of the “tender and deep spiritual and intellectual
relation” between man and woman, and contrasted this “marital ideal” with “fleeting
sexual love.” On the other hand, though intimate sexuality as the natural foundation
of the “community” between wife and husband had been damaged by the Christian
banishment of sex to the domain of sin, this historical “disciplining” of the man’s
sexual drives allowed marriage to become “a vessel of spiritual strength” for him as well.
Regarding the polemical appeal of her argument, both themes are quite significant.
On the one hand, they serve to draw a clear line against eroticism and to lay bare the
emotional, spiritual, and intellectual emptiness of sexual activity without moral
commitment. On the other hand, it is important for Weber’s legislative agenda to
show that men also have a great deal to gain from her alternative marital form
principle.
Concerning Weber’s theoretical analysis, these two themes are quite significant,
because they offer insight into her sociological understanding of the relation between
several levels of social life: institutionally mandated ideas (the moral standards of
Puritanism) shape individuals’ conduct (by motivating them to strive for moral
perfection, to view sex as merely a means for the procreation of children to the greater
glory of God, and to live monogamous, less sexually oriented lives). Individuals’
conduct (e.g., the “disciplined” man), in turn, reshapes the form of their relationships
(making them more tender, intimate, and spiritually based), and that form also
reflexively affects individuals’ lives (giving them a source of great strength, joy, and
energy). This theoretical understanding of social life, revealed through her passages on
the significance of Puritanism for the institution of marriage, is characteristic of
Weber’s thought throughout “Authority” and in general.
Weber’s employment of Kantian ethics. According to Weber, up until the development
of the “Puritan spirit,” marriage had been governed, to varying degrees, by the “form
principle” of “authority”Ðthat is, the structurally mandated inequality of power
between the sexes that subordinated the woman to the man’s will. At the conclusion
of her examination of Puritanism, however, the author noted a new development:
since that time, two dialectical ideas, both of which arose out of the Christian
tradition, have competed in their influence on human behavior: “fundamental subjugation under traditional and trusted authorities” and “fundamental subjugation
only under one’s own conscience.”
With this observation, Weber began an investigation into the ethical teachings of
freedom of German idealism, in which the latter of these two competing ideas
“achieved [its] deepest significance and [its] highest clarity.” Although the author
seems to present her subsequent discussion of Enlightenment ethics merely as an
examination of further historical ideas that influenced the character of marriage, in
fact, her employment of Kantian ideas in the service of feminist inquiry is fundamentally significant for her argument in “Authority” and for her work in general.
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SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY
Like many members of her intellectual circle, Weber made Kant’s thought a pillar
of her ideas. It is important to note that she employed the Kantian concept of
“autonomy” in three ways. First, she derived her ideal-typical, moral-evaluative
concept of autonomy directly from Kantian ethics, and she returned to this concept
throughout her work in order to critique patriarchy. Second, she proposed autonomy
as a structural form principle for marriage, one that should inform future legislation
regarding the family, and one that, if implemented through law, would restructure the
sexual relation between man and woman and make it more rewarding and satisfying
than any fashionable eroticist alternative. Finally, she understood autonomy in the
strict Kantian senseÐthat is, as an individualistic moral ideal of conduct according to
which all individuals, but particularly women, become reasoning, morally responsible
agents, and only through which may they achieve the full measure of their humanity.
Weber introduced the Kantian concept of autonomy by asserting that “[t]he human
being is, as a bearer of reason, intended to govern himselfÐthat is, to act not, for
example, according to the arbitrariness of his instincts, but rather, in accordance with
a conscience that has been subordinated to the moral law.”12 The “moral law” to
which she referred in this passage is Kant’s categorical imperative.13 In this context,
autonomy should be understood as distinct from the Kantian concept of “heteronomy,” which refers to the foreign determination of one’s will, be it by any earthly
authority, an “unreasoned” passion or instinct, orÐfor that matterÐGod.
Weber then continued her argument by explaining that “[a]s a bearer of this
capacity for `autonomy,’ the individual possesses its specific dignity which distinguishes it as a `personality’ before all other beings; it may, for that reason, raise the
claim to be `an end in itself.”’ It is important to note that Kantian ethics went so far as
to cite the human capacity for autonomy as the distinguishing factor between human
beings and all other animals. Further, only because of their reason, Kant argued, may
human beings be considered “ends in themselves.” By employing this Kantian line of
argument, Weber suggested that the principle of authority has deprived women of
their very humanity through the ages, and only through autonomy can they become
fully human.
The author completed the foundation of her Kantian critique of patriarchy by
asserting the “simple and undeniable principle for the shaping of human relations”
that “every person should respect in every other human being the predestination of
that person to be an end in himself. No person should consider his fellow human
beings merely as a means for his personal ends.” Note that, while Kant put forth this
maxim to guide autonomous individual human action alone, Weber employed the
“ends principle,” which is one formulation of the categorical imperative,14 explicitly as
a structural “principle for the shaping of human relations.” As such, the author
transformed a bourgeois, individualistic, and atomizing ethical principle into a structural precept that should define all human interactions.
Ultimately, Weber utilized the “ends principle” to direct a potent ethical critique at
patriarchy by explaining that
12
For two formulations of Kant’s principle of autonomy, see Kant (1972): “Always act so that you can
regard your own will as making universal law” (Kant 1972:434) and “Accordingly, every being of reason
must act as if, through his maxims, he were at every moment a member of the universal kingdom of ends
who is making universal rules” (Kant 1972:438).
13
For a formulation of Kant’s categorical imperative, compare Kant: “Always act so that you can will the
rule of your action to be a universal law” (Kant 1972:421). Kant delivered five formulations of his
categorical imperative, one of which Marianne uses to make her feminist argument.
14
For Kant’s formulation of the “ends principle,” see Kant (1972:429): “Always treat others, and yourself,
as an end, and never as a mere means.”
AUTHORITY AND AUTONOMY IN MARRIAGE
99
the path from the acceptance of this sentence to a new structuring of the relation
between the sexes seems to be a short one. For according to it, the highest ethical
goal of existence, for the woman as well, can be nothing other than the development into a morally autonomous personality. Accordingly, it is just as immoral
for her, too, to bend to a foreign will against her own conscience. Accordingly,
she, too, may not be used as a mere means to the husband’s ends.
Thus, Weber not only transformed this ethical principle into a normative system for
the governing of human relations, but employed it specifically in order to critique and
overcome patriarchy: only autonomy as a “form principle” will enable women to
achieve their full humanity as moral agents.
In sum, then, Weber’s discussion of Kantian ethics consists, on the one hand, of a
call to women to recapture their own autonomy. Women sacrifice their humanity and
dignity by allowing their will to be determined by anything but their own reason and
conscience. On the other hand, the author indicted the structurally mandated authority of men over women throughout history because, under it, men have violated the
categorical imperative by failing to treat women as ends and not merely as means. As
a result, women have been structurally deprived of their very humanity, because they
have not been permitted to fully develop as reasoning moral agents.
The woman’s liberation from male authority through modernity. After examining marriage through history, the author turned her attention toward an investigation of the
current character of the marital institution. To accomplish this, she focused on the
influence of Industrialization and its new material conditionsÐin short, modernityÐon
marriage and women’s lives. In this context, she noted that, while the maxim of
autonomy had existed before Industrialization, it had not been applied to women.
The material conditions of the new economy, in contrast, forced greater autonomy on
women by placing them in “superpersonal contexts and structures that remove them
from personal domination.” Prior to Industrialization, woman’s relations were limited
to the home and family, and, as such, her identity and consciousness were exclusively
oriented toward her interactions with husband, children, and other family members.
However, the industrial economy withdrew women from the restrictive interactions of
the home and inserted them into the diverse interactions of the extrafamilial world, in
which actors decide autonomously and are responsible for the consequences of those
decisions. This physical involvement outside the home also resulted in the woman’s
intellectual emancipation. Both aspects, the physical and the intellectual, challenged the
husband’s authority over his wife and fundamentally changed the character of marriage.
Thus, in theoretical terms, Weber observed that the power of one individual over
another is not simply dependent upon the relation between the two, but can be
intensified or ameliorated by the number and type of interactions within which the
subordinate finds herself in general. Furthermore, it is worth noting that, in contrast
to other sociologists of her generation who studied the drastic changes in the modern
world, Weber clearly emphasized women’s liberation from the home as a chief consequence of modernity. Though she observed that, for autonomous individuals, there
are many challenges involved in being free to make choices, her evaluation of this
development wasÐin contrast to other members of her intellectual circle, who
thought of modernity more ambivalentlyÐclearly positive. Weber was not only
interested in the context and mechanisms of patriarchy, but was, of course, also
concerned with the conditions under which liberation from that oppression might
be achieved. For her, modernity represented just such liberating conditions.
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The state of modern marriage under authority. Though modernity had forced changes
upon the institution of marriage, Weber observed that the governing law had not kept
pace. In this regard, German law resembled a “compromise between irreconcilable
principles” in which the husband still enjoyed “legally protected predominance” as an
“indispensable form-principle.” After concluding her examination of German family
law, Weber refocused her inquiry on the “fundamental question” of whether “authority or autonomy should shape spouses’ relations.” In order to address this question,
she investigated the condition of marriage in reality when, “in accordance with its
legal form,” the husband’s “fundamental authority” continued to govern the partners’
relationship, though that legal authority was increasingly at odds with the conditions
and consequences of modernity.
In framing her argument, Weber first reiterated, as a general proposition, the
importance of marriage for the development of both partners by stating that “[M]arital relationships encompass the entire person, and that which one spouse does and
feels, touches necessarily at some point the life of the other.” With this theoretical
assumption in mind, Weber asserted that marriage based on the form principle of
authority not only adversely shapes both partners’ conduct and their individual
development, but, consequently, also hinders the growth and health of their relationship to one another. First, regarding women’s conduct, she noted, for example, two
alternative courses of action in the context of the wife’s subordination: mere feigned
submissionÐthat is, acting with deceit and trickery toward her husband; or her actual
suppression of her own reason and the consequent abandonment of her very humanity. Similarly, with regard to the husband, authority shapes his conduct by making
him increasingly interested in controlling and monitoring his wife’s every thought and
move.
Besides describing how this structurally mandated form principle affects the conduct of both men and women, Weber also described the consequences of this influence
for each. With respect to wives, she cited women’s stalled “inner development,” and,
as such, on the one hand, related, in a theoretical sense, the influence of institutional
norms not only to mere conduct, but to the development of the individual’s personality as well. On the other hand, “inner development” refers specifically to the
individual’s ability to employ moral reason while obeying the categorical imperative.
As such, women who submit to the principle of authority lose their ability to act as
responsible moral agents, and, by doing so, they violate their own dignity and
humanity as well. This suppression of the woman’s development will, according to
Weber, also has grave consequences for the husband and his development, because, as
a result, he will experience no intellectual and spiritual stimulation or challenge in his
marriage, and will thus forfeit this fundamental source of strength, inspiration, and
growth. Finally, the author notes that, by shaping the conduct and development of
both partners, authority ultimately defines their relationship, which, in turn, will also
have long-term effects on their personal development.
Weber concluded her investigation of marriage by defining it as “a life’s partnership which is founded on the affinity of souls and senses, and on the desire for full
responsibility.” In perhaps one final statement against meaningless sexual love, the
author also explained the ethical significance of marriage as “the highest ideal of
human community that stands as an unshakable guiding star above the sexual life of
civilized humanity.”
As Weber stated in her concluding comments, it is increasingly difficult to make a
marriage between two people work across the years. But, as she explained in beautifully tender language in her concluding paragraph, only constant intellectual and
AUTHORITY AND AUTONOMY IN MARRIAGE
101
spiritual growth on the part of both partners will keep a relationship flourishing over a
lifetime of changes and challenges. In order to realize this growth, the man and the
woman must enjoy autonomy.
CONCLUSION
In my introduction to Marianne Weber’s “Authority and Autonomy in Marriage,”
I briefly examined her importance to the field of sociology and called for scholarly
attention to her work. In this short commentary, I have attempted to make a small
contribution toward that aim by addressing several key aspects of her thought.
First, Weber recognized the role of ideas as shaping forces in history and engaged
in an ideal-typical investigation of that history. However, in contrast to other thinkers, she did not shy away from value assessments in her use of ideal types, and she
offered “autonomy” as her “ideal” type of marriage. Additionally, in viewing the
importance of ideas in history, the author recognized that, though institutions had
produced potentially liberating thought, powerful actors had manipulated and instrumentalized those ideas in the interests of patriarchy.
Second, in an investigation that yields striking parallels to her husband’s work on
the religious origins of capitalism, Weber investigated religionÐspecifically, the Protestant spiritÐand showed that Protestant moral standards of conduct affected individuals’ consciousness and conduct and ultimately had great significance for the
character of marriage, which continues to affect that institution today.
Third, Weber employed the Kantian Enlightenment ideal of autonomy in an
innovative way. In order for women to attain their full humanity by becoming
autonomous, reasoning moral actors who are subjugated only under the categorical
imperative, the author advocated the adoption of “autonomy” as a structural “formprinciple” of marriage. Thus, though she subscribed to Kant’s ideal of individual
freedom, the author also recognized the importance of this ideal as a social structural
norm in order to allow all people to attain that freedom.
Fourth, Weber asserted that modern conditions had begun a positive process that
freed women from men’s authority by removing them from the exclusive, isolated
sphere of the home and placing them in “superpersonal contexts” in which they could
participate in diverse interactions. In this study of the modern economy, Weber’s
ideas yield the theoretical assertion that the quality and diversity of interactions
within which an individual exists affect the dynamics of power within each one of
those interactions. Further, though individual conduct is shaped by institutionally
sanctioned norms, it is also influenced by material conditions, and the resulting
character of the interactions and relations that arise out of that conduct ultimately
permits or restricts human development.
Through her discussion in the final portion of her essay, in a practical sense, the
author demonstrated the deficits of authority in the reality of marriage. However,
viewed theoretically, her examination revealed, first, her theoretical assumption of the
importance of marriageÐand all sexual relationsÐfor the development of the human
personality. Second, it displayed Weber’s understanding of the relation between social
structure, in the form of moral standards of conduct, individuals, and their interactions. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, it reiterated the author’s belief that
individuals’ ability to achieve an individualistic Enlightenment ideal is dependent
upon a structurally enforced form principle, legally mandated “autonomy” in marriage.
This necessity of structure to achieve individual “humanity” represents a significant
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departure from Kant’s ideas and intent and addresses the difficult theoretical tension
between human freedom and structural constraints in a very novel way.
REFERENCES
Bendix, R. 1960. Max Weber: An Intellectual Portrait. Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Co., Inc.
Britton, A. C. 1979. “The Life and Thought of Marianne Weber.” Master’s thesis, San Francisco State
University.
Kant, I. 1972. Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten. Edited by Wilhelm Weischedel. Frankfurt am Main:
Suhrkamp.
Nietzsche, F. 1966. Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None. Translated by Walter Kaufmann.
New York: Viking.
ÐÐÐ. 1994. Friedrich Nietzsche; Werke in Drei BaÈnden. KoÈln: KoÈnemann.
Rickert, H. 1902. Die Grenzen der naturwissenschaftlichen Begriffsbildung: Eine logische Einleitung in die
historischen Wissenschaften. TuÈbingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck).
Weber, M. 1907. Ehefrau und Mutter in der Rechtsentwicklung (Wife and Mother in the Development of
Law). TuÈbingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck).
ÐÐÐ. [1912] 1919. “AutoritaÈt und Autonomie in der Ehe” (Authority and Autonomy in Marriage).
Pp. 67±79 in Frauenfragen und Frauengedanken (Women’s Questions and Women’s Thoughts). TuÈbingen:
J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck).
ÐÐÐ. [1913] 1919. “Die Frau und die objektive Kultur.” Pp. 95±133 in Frauenfragen und Frauengedanken
(Women’s Questions and Women’s Thoughts). TuÈbingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck).
ÐÐÐ. [1914] 1919. “Die neue Frau.” Pp. 135±42 in Frauenfragen und Frauengedanken (Women’s Questions
and Women’s Thoughts). TuÈbingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck).
ÐÐÐ. 1935. Die Frauen und die Liebe. Koonigestein in Taunus: K. B. Langewissche.
ÐÐÐ. 1946. ErfuÈlltes Leben. Bremen: J. Storm.
ÐÐÐ. 1948. Lebenserinnerungen. Bremen: J. Storm.
ÐÐÐ. 1950. Max Weber: Ein Lebensbild. Heidelberg: Lambert Schneider.
Commentary on Craig R. Bermingham’s ‘‘Translation with Introduction
and Commentary’’ of Marianne Weber’s ‘‘Authority and Autonomy in
Marriage’’*
PATRICIA MADOO LENGERMANN
The George Washington University
JILL NIEBRUGGE-BRANTLEY
American University
Craig Bermingham’s translation of and commentary on Marianne Weber’s important
1912 essay ‘‘Authority and Autonomy in Marriage’’ in this journal (Sociological Theory
June 2003) may leave readers with several misconceptions: one, that there is no
contemporary scholarship on Marianne Weber’s sociology and social theory; two,
that there are no available English-language translations of this article or other work
by Marianne Weber; three, that Marianne Weber is best understood in the context of
Kant and Rickert, rather than in the context of a theoretical debate with contemporary
male sociologists, particularly her husband Max and her friend Georg Simmel; and
four, that she is unique in this period for the feminist focus of her social theory and its
concern with the effect of modernity on women. Though gratified by Bermingham’s
enthusiasm and by the recognition accorded to classical feminist social theory in the
publication of this article, we would like to correct these misconceptions.
While Marianne Weber is far from being an ‘‘overresearched’’ topic, there does exist
a useful literature seeking to recover her significance for sociology. The most significant
blocks are in English (dealt with here) and German (see Wobbe 1998b for an extensive
bibliography of works in German). The most extensive analyses of Marianne Weber in
English are Anne Britton’s 1979 master’s thesis, which is a good source for biographical
details, and our work in The Women Founders: Sociology and Social Theory, 1830–1930
(Lengermann and Niebrugge-Brantley 1998b). In the chapter in the latter work entitled
‘‘Marianne Weber (1870–1954)—A Woman-Centered Sociology,’’ we offer a biographical interpretation, present her general social theory, and place her in the context of the
canon of sociology and of the tradition of feminist sociology. Accompanying our
analysis are lightly abridged versions of Elizabeth Kirchen’s 1997 translations of
Marianne Weber’s ‘‘Authority and Autonomy in Marriage,’’ ‘‘The Valuation of Housework’’ (in which she mounts a feminist critique of the feminist arguments of Charlotte
Perkins Gilman and Ellen Key), and ‘‘Women’s Special Cultural Tasks’’ (in which she
debates Georg Simmel’s sociology of gender). All three of these essays are from
Marianne Weber’s 1919 collection, Frauenfragen und Frauengedanken. Bermingham’s
contribution would have been stronger had he indicated how his version differs from
Kirchen’s—or had he used his talent as a translator to share with the profession a notyet-translated article from Frauenfragen und Frauengedanken, such as ‘‘Die Frau und die
objektive Kultur’’ or ‘‘Beruf und Ehe.’’
*Direct correspondence to: Patricia Madoo Lengermann, 2105 Greenery Lane, Apt. 101, Silver Spring,
MD 20906; E-mail: patleng@attglobal.net.
Sociological Theory 21:4 December 2003
# American Sociological Association. 1307 New York Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20005-4701
COMMENTARY ON CRAIG R. BERMINGHAM
425
Generally, the literature in English on Marianne Weber, including our work, has had
three, sometimes-overlapping foci. The first—and historically the longest-studied—
focus is the exploration of the linked biographies of Max and Marianne Weber,
particularly as that linkage affected Max’s sociology (e.g., Bologh 1990; Gane 1993;
Kandal 1988; Lengermann and Niebrugge-Brantley 1998a; Mitzman 1970; Roth 1990;
Scaff 1988, 1998). The second focus is the discussion of her role in compiling, editing,
and thus patterning what we understand as Max Weber’s posthumous legacy, most
especially Economy and Society (e.g., Bair et al. 2000; Mommsen 2000; Zohn 1975). The
third focus is an assessment of Marianne Weber’s own writings as a contribution to
sociological thought. Here scholars have looked at her in the context of German
philosophy (McDonald 1994; Rawls 2000), her critique of Simmel’s theories of gender
(Mila 2002; Van Vucht Tijssen 1991; Wobbe 1998a), Durkheim’s critique of her
sociology (Alvarez-Uria 1999), a comparison between her social theory and that of
Max (Adams and Sydie 2001; Thomas 1985), and an exploration of her theory in its
own right and as part of the tradition of classical feminist sociology (Lengermann and
Niebrugge-Brantley 1998b, 2001, forthcoming; McDonald 1994). In addition to this
literature directly on Marianne Weber, there is a large and expanding body of scholarship on women’s contributions to the development of sociology in the founding and
classic generations. This literature provides an essential context for interpreting
Marianne Weber’s work (for bibliography here, see Lengermann and NiebruggeBrantley 2001).
Bermingham’s achievement is significantly diminished by his failure to acknowledge
any of these works, save for a single reference to Britton’s 1979 thesis. Conversely,
locating his commentary in this literature would have enhanced that commentary in
three ways. First, it would have let him emphasize his particular contributions to the
scholarship on Marianne Weber: his discussion of her reworking of Heinrich Rickert’s
analytical method of constructing ‘‘‘historical individuals’’’ into a tool linking analysis
to critique; his description of her transformation of Kant’s individualistic concept of
autonomy into a sociological concept that defines it as a fundamental ethical rule for
social interaction; and his calling attention to her concept of ‘‘form principles’’ (an
intriguing idea that is left underdeveloped). Second, he might have streamlined his
presentation by appropriately referencing arguments already existing in the literature,
which his discussions replicate—Marianne Weber’s biography, her interpretation of the
Protestant ethic, and her analysis of the structural determinants of male authority in
marriage and of the relational tension between male authority and the wife’s humanspecies need for personal development through autonomy.
Third, and most importantly, location in this scholarship would have let Bermingham
grasp the significance of several points on which he touches only in passing. Marianne
Weber was located in a discourse of feminist social thought with which she was deeply
familiar. She was not a feminist only in her political commitment and activism; she
was profoundly feminist in her theory and her theoretical method. Thus, the ‘‘context’’
of her activist approach to theoretical method and her adaptation of Rickert arises
from her use of feminist theoretical method. It is a hallmark of every feminist
sociologist of the classical generation to be concerned about the ends to which the
knowledge they gained should be put—indeed, it is only the end that justifies the
collection of knowledge. In her preface to Women and Economics, which Marianne
Weber had read, Charlotte Perkins Gilman identifies her purpose in writing social
theory as being to bring about liberationist social change: ‘‘to show how some of
the worst evils under which we suffer . . . are but a result of certain arbitrary
conditions . . . and how by removing those conditions, we may remove the evils resultant’’
426
SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY
(Gilman 1898:viii). Agnes Sinclair Holbrooke, one of the contributors to the feminist
sociology classic Hull-House Maps and Papers, summed up the general feeling
of classical women sociologists about their work: ‘‘The painful nature of minute
investigation, and the personal impertinence of many of the questions asked, would
be unendurable and unpardonable were it not for the conviction that the public
conscience when roused must demand better surroundings for the most inert and
long-suffering citizens of the commonwealth’’ (Holbrooke 1895:13–14). To borrow an
analysis from Mary Jo Deegan, who describes Jane Addams’s feminism as making her
a ‘‘critical pragmatist’’ (Deegan 1998:247–71), we see that Marianne Weber’s feminism
made her a critical practitioner of neo-Kantian philosophy and historical comparative
sociology. Marianne Weber’s fundamental methodological stance was to look at the
world and at the male-dominated social-science discourse around her from the standpoint of women. With that understanding in place, ‘‘Authority and Autonomy in
Marriage’’ becomes an essential work for tracing her discreet but searching critique of
Max Weber’s sociology. Her location in a feminist methodology meant that ideal
typification could not be value-neutral, but had to be critically engaged. (Relating to
this point, Bermingham [2003:95] gives a splendid passage from Marianne Weber
[1950], but does not see its part of a debate with Max.) As we have written at some
length (Lengermann and Niebrugge-Brantley 1998b), from the standpoint of women,
Marianne Weber challenges Max’s fundamental distinction between coercive and
legitimate power, arguing that subordinates typically experience another’s power as
the absence of their own autonomy, regardless of the basis on which the dominant’s
power rests. Her analysis of the Protestant ethic is not simply or primarily one of
‘‘fascinating parallels to her husband’s work’’ (Bermingham 2003:96), but an alternative interpretation: from the standpoint of women, the Protestant ethic is the
source, not primarily of the Western work ethic, but of women’s claim to moral,
legal, and political equality. From the standpoint of women, the spirit of capitalism is
not seen as leading to the male experience of an iron cage; rather, it ‘‘broke open the
circle of her gender-determined tasks’’ (Kirchen 1998:218) or ‘‘blew open the circle of
her family duties’’ (Bermingham 2003:90). And finally, when Marianne Weber is
located within the discourse of classical feminist sociology, she is, of course, not ‘‘in
contrast to other sociologists of her generation’’ in seeing ‘‘women’s liberation from
the home as a chief consequence of modernity’’ (Bermingham 2003:99). In point of fact,
she is one of many women sociologists—Edith Abbott, Jane Addams, Sophonisba
Breckinridge, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Florence Kelley, and Harriet Martineau,
among others—considering this impact.
Most of Marianne Weber’s sociological writing and much of the German scholarship on her are not yet available in English. Craig Bermingham would do a real
service to the profession by turning to these two important tasks.
REFERENCES
Adams, B. N., and R. Sydie. 2001. Classical Social Theory. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press.
Alvarez-Uria, F. 1999. ‘‘Emile Durkheim’s Critique of Marianne Weber.’’ Politica y Sociedad 32:189–93.
Bair, H., M. R. Lepsius, W. J. Mommsen, and W. Schlucter. 2000. ‘‘Overview of the Text of Economy and
Society by the Editors of the Max Weber Gesamtausgabe.’’ Max Weber Studies 1:104–14.
Bermingham, C. R. 2003. ‘‘Translation with Introduction and Commentary of Marianne Weber’s ‘Authority and Autonomy in Marriage.’’’ Sociological Theory 21(2):85–102.
Bologh, R. W. 1990. Love or Greatness: Max Weber and Masculine Thinking—A Feminist Inquiry. New
York: Unwin Hyman.
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Britton, A. C. 1979. ‘‘The Life and Thought of Marianne Weber.’’ Master’s thesis, Department of History,
San Francisco State University.
Gane, M. 1993. Harmless Lovers? Gender, Theory, and Personal Relationships. New York: Routledge.
Gilman, C. P. 1898. Women and Economics. New York: Small, Maynard & Company.
Holbrooke, A. S. 1895. ‘‘Map Notes and Comments.’’ Pp. 3–23 in Hull-House Maps and Papers by Residents
of Hull-House, A Presentation of Nationalities and Wages in a Congested District of Chicago, Together with
Comments and Essays on Problems Growing out of Social Conditions. Boston: Crowell.
Kandal, T. R. 1988. The Woman Question in Classical Sociological Theory. Miami: International Universities Press.
Kirchen, E., transl. 1998. ‘‘‘Authority and Autonomy in Marriage,’ ‘On the Valuation of Housework’
‘Women and Objective Culture’—Selections from Marianne Weber’s Reflections on Women and Women’s
Issues (Frauenfrage und Frauengedanke).’’ Pp. 215–28 in The Women Founders: Sociology and Social
Theory, by P. Lengermann and J. Niebrugge-Brantley. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Lengermann, P., and J. Niebrugge-Brantley. 1998a. ‘‘Autobiography in Biography: A Feminist Reading of
Marianne Weber’s Max Weber: A Life.’’ Paper presented at the International Sociological Association
Meeting, Montreal, July 25–August 1, 1998.
———. 1998b. The Women Founders: Sociology and Social Theory, 1830–1930. New York: McGraw-Hill.
———. 2001. ‘‘Classical Feminist Social Theory.’’ Pp. in A Handbook of Social Theory, ed. G. Ritzer and
B. Smart. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
———. Forthcoming. ‘‘Early Women Sociologists and Classical Sociological Theory.’’ In Classical Sociological Theory, 7th ed., ed. G. Ritzer. New York: McGraw-Hill.
McDonald, L. 1994. The Women Founders of the Social Sciences. Ottawa, ON: Carleton University Press.
Mila, N. C. 2000. ‘‘The Argument Between Marianne Weber and Georg Simmel Regarding the Question of
Women.’’ Simmel Studies 10:261–64.
Mitzman, A. 1970. The Iron Cage. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Mommsen, W. J. 2000. ‘‘Max Weber’s ‘Grand Sociology’: The Origins and Composition of Wirtschaft und
Gesellschaft Soziologie.’’ History & Theory 39(3):364–83.
Rawls, A. 2000. ‘‘The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Feminism: The Dialectic of Sexuality and
Autonomy in the Work of Marianne Weber.’’ Unpublished manuscript.
Roth, G. 1990. ‘‘Marianne Weber and Her Circle.’’ Society 127:63–70.
Scaff, L. A. 1988. ‘‘Weber, Simmel, and the Sociology of Culture.’’ Sociological Review 36(1):1–30.
———. 1998. ‘‘The ‘Cool Objectivity of Sociation’: Max Weber and Marianne Weber in America.’’ History
of the Human Sciences 11(2):61–82.
Thomas, J. J. R. 1985. ‘‘Rationalization and the Status of Gender Divisions.’’ Sociology 19(3):409–20.
Van Vucht Tijssen, L. 1991. ‘‘Women and Objective Culture: George Simmel and Marianne Weber.’’
Theory, Culture, and Society 8:203–18.
Weber, M. 1919. Frauenfragen und Frauengedanken (Women’s Questions and Women’s Thoughts). Tübingen:
J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck).
———. 1950. Max Weber: Ein Lebensbild. Heidelberg: Lambert Schneider.
Wobbe, T. 1998a. ‘‘Elective Affinities: Georg Simmel and Marianne Weber on Differentiation and
Individuation.’’ Paper presented at the International Sociological Association Meeting, Montreal,
July 25–August 1, 1998.
———. 1998b. ‘‘Marianne Weber (1870–1954) Ein anderes Labor der Moderne.’’ Pp. 153–177 in Frauen en
der Soziologie Neun Portraits, ed. C. Honegger and T. Wobbe. Munich: Beck.
Zohn, H. 1975. ‘‘Translator’s Introduction.’’ Pp. i–vii in Max Weber: A Biography. New York: Wiley.
The Stranger
Georg Simmel
If wandering is the liberation from every given point in
space, and thus the conceptional opposite to fixation at
such a point, the sociological form of the “stranger”
presents the unity, as it were, of these two
characteristics. This phenomenon too, however, reveals
that spatial relations are only the condition, on the one
hand, and the symbol, on the other, of human relations.
The stranger is thus being discussed here, not in the
sense often touched upon in the past, as the wanderer
who comes today and goes tomorrow, but rather as the
person who comes today and stays to morrow. He is, so
to speak, the potential wanderer: although he has not
moved on, he has not quite overcome the freedom of
coming and going. He is fixed within a particular
spatial group, or within a group whose boundaries are
similar to spatial boundaries. But his position in this
group is determined, essentially, by the fact that he has
not belonged to it from the beginning, that he imports
qualities into it, which do not and cannot stem from the
group itself.
The unity of nearness and remoteness involved in every
human relation is organized, in the phenomenon of the
stranger, in a way which may be most briefly
formulated by saying that in the relationship to him,
distance means that he, who is close by, is far, and
strangeness means that he, who also is far, is actually
near. For, to be a stranger is naturally a very positive
relation; it is a specific form of interaction. The
inhabitants of Sirius are not really strangers to us, at
least not in any social logically relevant sense: they do
not exist for us at all; they are beyond far and near. The
stranger, like the poor and like sundry “inner enemies,”
is an element of the group itself. His position as a fullfledged member involves both being outside it and
confronting it. The following statements, which are by
no means intended as exhaustive, indicate how
elements which increase distance and repel, in the
relations of and with the stranger produce a pattern of
coordination and consistent interaction.
Throughout the history of economics the stranger
everywhere appears as the trader, or the trader as
stranger. As long as economy is essentially selfsufficient, or products are exchanged within a spatially
narrow group, it needs no middleman: a trader is only
required for products that originate outside the group.
Insofar as members do not leave the circle in order to
buy these necessities — in which case they are the
“strange” merchants in that outside territory — the trader
must be a stranger, since nobody else has a chance to
make a living.
This position of the stranger stands out more sharply if
he settles down in the place of his activity, instead of
leaving it again: in innumerable cases even this is
possible only if he can live by intermediate trade. Once
an economy is somehow closed the land is divided up,
and handicrafts are established that satisfy the demand
for them, the trader, too, can find his existence. For in
trade, which alone makes possible unlimited
combinations, intelligence always finds expansions and
new territories, an achievement which is very difficult
to attain for the original producer with his lesser
mobility and his dependence upon a circle of customers
that can be increased only slowly. Trade can always
absorb more people than primary production; it is,
therefore, the sphere indicated for the stranger, who
intrudes as a supernumerary, so to speak, into a group
in which the economic positions are actually occupied – the classical example is the history of European Jews.
The stranger is by nature no “owner of soil” — soil not
only in the physical, but also in the figurative sense of a
life-substance which is fixed, if not in a point in space,
at least in an ideal point of the social environment.
Although in more intimate relations, he may develop all
kinds of charm and significance, as long as he is
considered a stranger in the eyes of the other, he is not
an “owner of soil.” Restriction to intermediary trade,
and often (as though sublimated from it) to pure
finance, gives him the specific character of mobility. If
mobility takes place within a closed group, it embodies
that synthesis of nearness and distance which
constitutes the formal position of the stranger. For, the
fundamentally mobile person comes in contact, at one
time or another, with every individual, but is not
organically connected, through established ties of
kinship, locality, and occupation, with any single one.
Another expression of this constellation lies in the
objectivity of the stranger. He is not radically
committed to the unique ingredients and peculiar
Page 1 of 3 | The Stranger, Simmel
tendencies of the group, and therefore approaches them
with the specific attitude of “objectivity.” But
objectivity does not simply involve passivity and
detachment; it is a particular structure composed of
distance and nearness, indifference and involvement. I
refer to the discussion (in the chapter on
“Superordination and Subordination” [8]) of the
dominating positions of the person who is a stranger in
the group; its most typical instance was the practice of
those Italian cities to call their judges from the outside,
because no native was free from entanglement in family
and party interests.
With the objectivity of the stranger is connected, also,
the phenomenon touched upon above, [9] although it is
chiefly (but not exclusively) true of the stranger who
moves on. This is the fact that he often receives the
most surprising openness — confidences which
sometimes have the character of a confessional and
which would be carefully withheld from a more closely
related person. Objectivity is by no means nonparticipation (which is altogether outside both
subjective and objective interaction), but a positive and
specific kind of participation — just as the objectivity of
a theoretical observation does not refer to the mind as a
passive tabula rasa on which things inscribe their
qualities, but on the contrary, to its full activity that
operates according to its own laws, and to the
elimination, thereby, of accidental dislocations and
emphases, whose individual and subjective differences
would produce different pictures of the same object.
Objectivity may also be defined as freedom: the
objective individual is bound by no commitments
which could prejudice his perception, understanding,
and evaluation of the given. The freedom, however,
which allows the stranger to experience and treat even
his close relationships as though from a bird’s-eye view,
contains many dangerous possibilities. In uprisings of
all sorts, the party attacked has claimed, from the
beginning of things, that provocation has come from the
outside, through emissaries and instigators. Insofar as
this is true, it is an exaggeration of the specific role of
the stranger: he is freer practically and theoretically; he
surveys conditions with less prejudice; his criteria for
them are more general and more objective ideals; he is
not tied down in his action by habit, piety, and
precedent. [10]
Finally, the proportion of nearness and remoteness
which gives the stranger the character of objectivity,
also finds practical expression in the more abstract
nature of the relation to him. That is, with the stranger
one has only certain more general qualities in common,
whereas the relation to more organically connected
persons is based on the commonness of specific
differences from merely general features. In fact, all
somehow personal relations follow this scheme in
various patterns. They are determined not only by the
circumstance that certain common features exist among
the individuals, along with individual differences,
which either influence the relationship or remain
outside of it. For, the common features themselves are
basically determined in their effect upon the relation by
the question whether they exist only between the
participants in this particular relationship, and thus are
quite general in regard to this relation, but are specific
and incomparable in regard to everything outside of it -or whether the participants feel that these features are
common to them because they are common to a group,
a type, or mankind in general. In the case of the second
alternative, the effectiveness of the common features
becomes diluted in proportion to the size of the group
composed of members who are similar in this sense.
Although the commonness functions as their unifying
basis, it does not make these particular persons
interdependent on one another, because it could as
easily connect everyone of them with all kinds of
individuals other than the members of his group. This
too, evidently, is a way in which a relationship includes
both nearness and distance at the same time: to the
extent to which the common features are general, they
add, to the warmth of the relation founded on them, an
element of coolness, a feeling of the contingency of
precisely this relation — the connecting forces have lost
their specific and centripetal character.
In the relation to the stranger, it seems to me, this
constellation has an extraordinary and basic
preponderance over the individual elements that are
exclusive with the particular relationship. The stranger
is close to us, insofar as we feel between him and
ourselves common features of a national, social,
occupational, or generally human, nature. He is far
from us, insofar as these common features extend
beyond him or us, and connect us only because they
connect a great many people.
A trace of strangeness in this sense easily enters even
the most intimate relationships. In the stage of first
passion, erotic relations strongly reject any thought of
generalization: the lovers think that there has never
been a love like theirs; that nothing can be compared
either to the person loved or to the feelings for that
person. An estrangement — whether as cause or as
consequence it is difficult to decide usually comes at
the moment when this feeling of uniqueness vanishes
from the relationship. A certain skepticism in regard to
its value, in itself and for them, attaches to the very
thought that in their relation, after all, they carry out
only a generally human destiny; that they experience an
experience that has occurred a thousand times before;
Page 2 of 3 | The Stranger, Simmel
that, had they not accidentally met their particular
partner, they would have found the same significance in
another person.
Something of this feeling is probably not absent in any
relation, however close, because what is common to
two is never common to them alone, but is subsumed
under a general idea which includes much else besides,
many possibilities of commonness. No matter how little
these possibilities become real and how often we forget
them, here and there, nevertheless, they thrust
themselves between us like shadows, like a mist which
escapes every word noted, but which must coagulate
into a solid bodily form before it can be called jealousy.
In some cases, perhaps the more general, at least the
more unsurmountable, strangeness is not due to
different and ununderstandable matters. It is rather
caused by the fact that similarity, harmony, and
nearness are accompanied by the feeling that they are
not really the unique property of this particular
relationship: they are something more general,
something which potentially prevails between the
partners and an indeterminate number of others, and
therefore gives the relation, which alone was realized,
no inner and exclusive necessity.
On the other hand, there is a kind of “strangeness” that
rejects the very commonness based on something more
general which embraces the parties. The relation of the
Greeks to the Barbarians is perhaps typical here, as are
all cases in which it is precisely general attributes, felt
to be specifically and purely human, that are disallowed
to the other. But “stranger,” here, has no positive
meaning; the relation to him is a non-relation; he is not
what is relevant here, a member of the group itself.
As a group member, rather, he is near and far at the
same time, as is characteristic of relations founded only
on generally human commonness. But between
nearness and distance, there arises a specific tension
when the consciousness that only the quite general is
common, stresses that which is not common. In the case
of the person who is a stranger to the country, the city,
the race, etc., however, this non-common element is
once more nothing individual, but merely the
strangeness of origin, which is or could be common to
many strangers. For this reason, strangers are not really
conceived as individuals, but as strangers of a particular
type: the element of distance is no less general in regard
to them than the element of nearness.
This form is the basis of such a special case, for
instance, as the tax levied in Frankfort and elsewhere
upon medieval Jews. Whereas the Beede [tax] paid by
the Christian citizen changed with the changes of his
fortune, it was fixed once for all for every single Jew.
This fixity rested on the fact that the Jew had his social
position as a Jew, not as the individual bearer of certain
objective contents. Every other citizen was the owner of
a particular amount of property, and his tax followed its
fluctuations. But the Jew as a taxpayer was, in the first
place, a Jew, and thus his tax situation had an invariable
element. This same position appears most strongly, of
course, once even these individual characterizations
(limited though they were by rigid invariance) are
omitted, and all strangers pay an altogether equal headtax.
In spite of being inorganically appended to it, the
stranger is yet an organic member of the group. Its
uniform life includes the specific conditions of this
element. Only we do not know how to designate the
peculiar unity of this position other than by saying that
it is composed of certain measures of nearness and
distance. Although some quantities of them characterize
all relationships, a special proportion and reciprocal
tension produce the particular, formal relation to the
“stranger.”
ENDNOTES
8. Pp. 216-221 above. — Tr.
9. On pp. 500-502 of the same chapter from which the
present “Exhurs” is taken (IX, “Der Raum und die
raumlichen Ordnungen der Gesellschaft,” (Space and
the Spatial Organization of Society). The chapter itself
is not included in this volume. — Tr.
10. But where the attacked make the assertion falsely,
they do so from the tendency of those in higher position
to exculpate inferiors, who, up to the rebellion, have
been in a consistently close relation with them. For, by
creating the fiction that the rebels were not really guilty,
but only instigated, and that the rebellion did not really
start with them, they exonerate themselves, inasmuch as
they altogether deny all real grounds for the uprising.
From Kurt Wolff (Trans.) The Sociology of Georg
Simmel. New York: Free Press, 1950, pp. 402 – 408.
Page 3 of 3 | The Stranger, Simmel
Chapter 1
The Metropolis and Mental Life
Georg Simmel
The deepest problems of modern life flow
from the attempt of the individual to maintain the independence and individuality of
his existence against the sovereign powers
of society, against the weight of the historical heritage and the external culture and
technique of life. This antagonism represents the most modern form of the conflict
which primitive man must carry on with
nature for his own bodily existence. The
eighteenth century may have called for liberation from all the ties which grew up
historically in politics, in religion, in morality and in economics in order to permit
the original natural virtue of man, which is
equal in everyone, to develop without inhibition; the nineteenth century may have
sought to promote, in addition to man’s
freedom, his individuality (which is connected with the division of labour) and his
achievements which make him unique and
indispensable but which at the same time
make him so much the more dependent on
the complementary activity of others;
Nietzsche may have seen the relentless
struggle of the individual as the prerequisite
for his full development, while socialism
found the same thing in the suppression of
all competition ± but in each of these the
same fundamental motive was at work,
namely the resistance of the individual to
being levelled, sw…